The Global Music Industry revenue has grown around 18.5% in the year 2021, all thanks to the persistent growth in streaming subscriptions. According to the latest report published by IFPI, the music industry, which had previously struggled with diminishing revenues for 15 years, had its seventh straight year of increase in 2021.
Last year, streaming accounted for 65 percent of the global recorded music earnings, as the streaming services witnessed the number of paid subscribers soaring to record levels. Last year alone, close to 80 million people jumped on the streaming bandwagon, pushing the total number of global subscription customers to 523 million by the end of 2021.
As illustrated in the chart below, Streaming subscriptions have consistently increased over the last decade. Beginning at 8 million in 2010, the number of paid music subscription customers grew exponentially, surpassing 100 million in 2016, before nearly tripling in the next five years.
Speaking specifically about India, the music streaming industry had around 26.7 million paid subscribers in 2017 which grew two fold by the year 2020 and further continued to grow by 16 % in the year 2021 touching the landmark of 59.4 million. The subscribers are further estimated to reach up to 87.2 million by the year 2025.
Paid subscribers for the music streaming service provider, Spotify, grew by 16% year on year (YoY) taking the total to 180 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. In 2021 alone, Spotify registered 61 million active users per month, out of which, paid users came up to be around 25 million and the rest 36 million users were supported by ads.
However, India only witnessed 4.3% user penetration for paid music streaming services, far lower in comparison to the developed economies such as the United States witnessing 30.2% penetration, the United Kingdom at 27.5%, Germany at 25.1%, Sweden at 24.6%, and Singapore at 24.6%